Black cops targeted in letter

By Daniel Tepfer

Updated 4:04 pm, Friday, October 2, 2015

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BRIDGEPORT — There are similarities between the recently discovered racist letter left on the windshields of city police officers’ personal vehicles and the one left in officers’ department mailboxes nine months ago.

Both are typed on Police Department letterhead. Both start out with the words, “White Power,” a term coined by the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party in the late 1960s and '70s.

But this second letter appears to be a hit list of black officers.

There are the names of five black officers who recently resigned or retired from the department, including independent mayoral candidate David Daniels, and then continues:

The Guardians is an organization of black police officers. Lt. Blackwell is its president.

“I guess you could say there are some similarities in the letterhead and the words White Power,” Police Chief Joseph Gaudett said.

The newest letter was discovered Sunday at about 4 a.m. on the windshields of eight police cars and personal cars of officers in the department’s lower lot on Congress Street. Gaudett said it appears the placement of the letters was random. The cars where the letters were placed were out of sight of surveillance cameras in the lot.

It claims on the letter to be from the Emerald Society, an organization of Irish police officers and is signed by Assistant Chief James Nardozzi.

“I am disgusted that someone would make such a hateful statement and falsify my signature to the document,” said Nardozzi. “I did not write or sign this letter nor have I made any statements that even remotely reflect the sentiments of this letter.”

Nardozzi was previously accused by some minority officers of racism after he introduced a speaker at the police academy, which is headed by Blackwell, who allegedly made some racist remarks.

“This appears to be a desperate act to cause racial strife in the Police Department,” Gaudett said. He said he has referred the letter to the state police and Bridgeport State’s Attorney John Smriga.

Last February a racist letter typed on city letterhead was distributed through the Police Department and began and ended with "White Power." The state police and the Bridgeport state’s attorney’ office have been investigating the source of the letter.

Clive Higgins, a black former office who is listed on the new letter resigned from the department in July after being questioned by the city’s Officer of Internal Affairs on his possible connection to the first letter.

That letter came on the heels of Higgins’ acquittal in January 2015 of felony civil rights violations in the May 2011 stomping of Orlando Lopez-Soto in Beardsley Park. The letter stated that Higgins didn’t belong in the Police Department.

The president of the local chapter of the NAACP, George Mintz, said he is frustrated that there hasn’t been a conclusion of the investigation into the first letter.

“My concern is that this is the second communication that has gone to the Bridgeport Police Department and I’m still trying to get the conclusion of the investigation into the first letter,” he said. “This is highly unacceptable.”

Mintz said he will be meeting with the executive board of the local NAACP to decide what action to take.

Charles Paris, president of the police union, called the letter deplorable and said he also is frustrated that the investigation into the first letter has not concluded.

“Our name is being spread across the country as being a racist police department and we need to clear that up,” Paris said.